Sharp as a Needle
by Bleedyr
Summary: Jack relfects on himself, Tyler and Marla as he slowly loses his mind. This isnt necessarily a Tyler Comes Back fic, it leaves most to the imagnation.


Sharp as a Needle  
  
Marla got a job someplace.  
  
You don't know where, and she doesn't tell you. It's doesn't really matter.  
  
She said she is tired of having no food, and she wanted to buy a nice jacket. She's also taken up drinking, the only reason she didn't start before was probably because she was always broke.  
  
Anyway, she takes care of you.  
  
Just like Tyler.  
  
You miss him sometimes.  
  
You don't work. Marla used to bitch about that.  
  
You told her, "Well, if I get a job, you won't be able to get those free meals."  
  
She told you, "Fuck you. Ever since that shit went down you've been a lazy fucking ass."  
  
She was referring to the credit card buildings blowing to hell around them. She was referring to Tyler's absence, even if she didn't know it.  
  
You haven't told her about Tyler, she wouldn't understand. You guess she just thought you were crazy, maybe you still are. Maybe people don't just recover from shit like that. Well, whatever.  
  
You don't get a job because you don't want to run into Space Monkey's. You stay in Marla's apartment all day and then fuck her when she gets home. She wears the pants, you guess.  
  
Its funny, she is the one who works, keeps food on the table, she takes care of you. Who would have figured that she would ever provide for anyone else?  
  
This is your life.  
  
And it's ending one minute at a time.  
  
Marla comes home scared. Apparently, a man with a broken nose asked her how Mr. Durden was doing, and when was he coming back.  
  
Marla's answer surprised you, she must have picked it up at the house on Paper Street or when the Space Monkey's caught her on the bus. It must have been the only way out of the situation. Marla is sometimes smarter then she looks.  
  
"The first rule of Project Mayhem is: you do not ask questions."  
  
This made you laugh because you knew Marla would die before she shaved her head. You knew she couldn't fall into line no matter who told her to. You could see it now, Marla in the ring with some guy twice her size and more hair on his arms then his head. Marla, Marla bouncing back and forth and laying a hard one on the side of his head.  
  
No shirts, no shoes, would Marla have to take her Bra off?  
  
When you came home after your wild goose chase after Tyler, you find Marla with a black eye. You wonder which Space Monkey gave it to her.  
  
Sometimes you think of all the things Tyler did. You've gotten past the fact that this was in fact you're doing, but if you were consciously aware of it, it wouldn't have happened.  
  
That all that keeps you from feeling guilty.  
  
You are not special.  
  
You may not be special, but Tyler sure was. And he knew it, but he would never admit to that. Cocky bastard. Even though he wasn't real, you still envy him.  
  
Where is Tyler now?  
  
Marla asks why you don't fuck as well as you used to. You remember fucking her like Tyler did, and you remember his moves, but if you used them that would make you feel cheap. It's better to just be yourself.  
  
But you didn't answer. She took that as embarrassment.  
  
She stares at you sometimes, and you should wonder what she's thinking. But it's not like you care, so you don't.  
  
Marla tries to figure you out.  
  
You met Tyler on an airplane, you killer Mr. Durden in a corporate building two minutes before the buildings around you exploded and collapsed all because they had gallons of Co2 in trucks placed in the basement near a vital support structure that had been timed to raise hell simultaneously.  
  
Everything around you is commercial. There is still some Tyler in you yet.  
  
But maybe not. Just because you still have some of his philosophies don't mean shit, because it doesn't mean shit to you.  
  
You're not Tyler Durden, no matter what the Space Monkeys think.  
  
Where do we go when we die?  
  
If you have a multiple personality, are they really another person?  
  
You said, "You're a voice in my head..."  
  
Tyler responded, "You're a voice in mine!"  
  
If you believed in all of that religious bullshit, you might wonder-  
  
Will I see him when I die?  
  
How would god sort out a multiple personality?  
  
Marla said, "I just can't win with you, can I?"  
  
Marla got pregnant two months ago, and then she had your abortion. She didn't tell you if it was a girl or a boy. She probably didn't want to know either. If it was a boy you would have named it Tyler. But then that might open up a can of worms with Marla, and you were trying to avoid the whole situation that dealt with anything Tyler related.  
  
That was hard, because of the Space Monkey stalkers and advertisers.  
  
"You are so crazy I can't even begin to keep up!"  
  
Marla had to have said that, no one else would have.  
  
You walk down the stairs to the lobby, away from your shithole apartment.  
  
A Space Monkey is a doorman. He shouldn't even be there, with the way the slumlord is about money, greedy sun-nu-va whore, so you know he is there for you. You can tell what he is, even without bruises and cuts and broken bones. It's the way he looks at you.  
  
You walk past him towards the mail slots.  
  
There is junk mail, and won add in particular that says it can give you permanent makeup for a low price. You will have to give that one to Marla later.  
  
There is also a letter from Marla's mother. She is probably asking for more of Marla's fat.  
  
The last thing you see is a letter addressed to you, with Marla's address as the source, although it doesn't say just who it is from.  
  
You wonder maybe if it's some sort of trick, or if Marla sent you the letter to tell you to get out, and it would say I want a divorce if you two had been married. But if Marla wanted to talk to you about that, it wouldn't be in a letter, it would be in the living room being screamed at you.  
  
At last you think of Tyler.  
  
Reject your parents, reject your friends, reject you peers, reject your teacher.  
  
Reject Tyler.  
  
He was what you needed.  
  
You can tell now that the reason Tyler had the Space Monkeys go after Marla is because you gave him permission. You didn't know it then but you gave him all the initiative he needed when you were driving in that car with Tyler and the two Space Monkeys in that back.  
  
"What do you wish you had done before you died?"  
  
"Paint a self portrait!"  
  
"Build a house!"  
  
Tyler launched us into oblivion in that car, and then all hell broke lose.  
  
And Tyler left you.  
  
You shouted, "Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck fight club- fuck Marla- I am sick of all your shit!"  
  
Reject your teacher, reject your lover.  
  
No one can lead you.  
  
The moment you said "fuck Marla" you now realize that you gave Tyler permission.  
  
Just like you gave him permission to kill your boss.  
  
Tyler sped up the car.  
  
We are the all singing, all dancing crap-  
  
You wonder whether or not you wish you had never met Tyler.  
  
Where would you be now if you hadn't?  
  
The real question is, would you want to be that person?  
  
You take the mail upstairs and tell Marla, "Look, I got a letter from myself."  
  
She reply's, "Don't read it, you might have written something you don't want to hear."  
  
Sometimes you wonder if Marla secretly knows about you and Tyler, about the difference, and just plays dumb.  
  
You debate whether or not to follow her advice, and then decide that after all, you already know what Tyler has to say, there is no harm in reading it.  
  
You kind of liked your boss, and you sort of liked Marla. That is why you had to stop Tyler.  
  
Marla was what stopped Tyler.  
  
Sometimes you laugh. You laugh because Tyler knew all along that you and he were the same, so to speak. He dropped hints everywhere.  
  
"Tell him you blew it all up, that's what he wants to hear." And then Tyler went upstairs to fuck Marla.  
  
You had no fucking clue.  
  
No one could lead you, except for Tyler.  
  
He was your teacher.  
  
And you rejected him.  
  
The letter says,  
  
"Realign your perception, psycho-boy."  
  
You miss Tyler.  
  
But you know that if he ever did come back, it may be the other way around. Tyler kills you. Would you come back?  
  
Tyler once told you, "Your one step closer to hitting bottom."  
  
Tyler's already been there.  
  
I know what some of you are thinking, why the fuck was she skipping around so much? One second Jack is talking about this and then he just switches off topic and then back again. I wanted the reader to get the impression that Jack is pretty much fucked in the head; he's obviously got an obsession with Tyler, even though he's dead. This isn't a Tyler comes back fic; it just shows how little Jack was without Tyler. If you wondering about who sent Jack the letter, that's for you to interpret. Reviews are welcome! 


End file.
